Όποιος έχει πολύ πιπέρι βάζει και στα λάχανα

Archive for the ‘Gut feeling’ Category

You see the Beagle? He extended the finger and pointed. You follow it west to the end, then turn left, straight down south, keep Cape Hoorn on your right hand. You´ll clean yourself from the most human and the most urban on the Drake. Don´t be alert, it´s a soothing katharsis.

Then tell Ernesto to turn the tip to the Weddell sea where the mighty got lost and those high in spirit played ball. Through unsurveyed waters where the horizon seizes to exist. The southern the better.

Free your eyes from the lens, let Antarctica flow and it may reach your soul. Ernest discovered that almost a century ago. For no photo will reflect the atemporality and space you would feel and grasp. The captain ordered the helmsman who dully repeated, south of ﻿﻿﻿63 24´S and 56 59´W.

You eat and eat and eat. And you go on eating. At the beginning heavy stuff, because little did you know. Specialized papers, cutting-edge communications, complex carbohydrates, heavy proteins. And you like it. You have a big fat plate of unknown tastes and you shove your face in it, devouring food like a pig in first youth.

You like it, only that you observe that you stop shitting. Yeah, you used to shit regularly, nothing of really significant value (or volume) but it was regular. Not anymore. At the beginning the frequency reduction is not alarming. A conference here, a conference there, an abstract, new ideas, a paragraph or two, an experiment that seems to work.

So you like it. And you keep eating. And you start shitting less, sort of an inherent terror of facing the write-up, translated in sad anal retention out of fear of a potentially foul result that just won’t come out. You wait and wait, and as the time goes, the pain grows. And as the pain grows you don’t even want to eat anymore. You just stop eating, and you try to digest the last bible-paper you read, that puts things in perspective and your research at the level of two centuries ago. Food has started to disgust you and you are constantly googling the last-minute flight availability to a place as far from universities as possible.

At some point, either because the budget finishes or because life takes its toll, you start farting. Nothing consistent, very small, tiny farts, in the shape of abstract pages, table of contents, pretentious page numbers.

Small and coward farts. Bit of introduction, copy paste theory chapter, some equations you plugged in matlab centuries ago. Ready-made. But the big fat shit everybody expects you to produce after all these years of eating, won’t quite go down the porcelain haven of the lavatory.

Then you start farting bit less, but bigger ones. The really smelly and not-so-loud. Little by little. Experimental setup. New output. Nothing more. At the next stage, your bowel movements are non-existent. The pain is unbearable, especially when all others enjoy life as summer approaches. You keep on typing, 1 word/hour, you delete 2 words/minute. Your rectum hurts so much that the small farts that come out with some liquid is not from the juices of your shit (for it is drier than Sahara on a sand-stormy day), rather than from internal bleeding of shearing the sensitive anal wall. Your brain is just exploding and you want out. Out of your own skin. Conclusion chapter. Recommendation. Bull-and I only wished-shit. You print it just to tear it apart.

You have reached your limits. Your constipation is playing games on you and it is becoming chronic condition. You are afraid you will never find redemption after so many years of endless scientific carbohydrate consumption. You are scared shitless -sarcasm- they will find you there, lying pulseless on your keyboard, landing strip for the shitflies amidst a mountain of scientific papers and a landslide of fart-chapters.

Until one day you blink.

Survival instinct hits.

You take a decision.

No.

You take THE decision.

You are going to sit on that toilet bowl, you will tamper with your very own asshole if necessary, you will do all it takes, until you manage to shit that shit out. The pain is unbearable, you have cried many times, but now it is a moment of fight. Are you a Man or are you a fucking Mouse?

You strain, you push, your eyes can barely stand the pressure, your sphincter won’t cooperate, but you envision the light at the end of the smelly tunnel. You have the will to prevail, to shear the fabric of time and space and in what seems to be eternity you manage to produce a bloody steamy thesis book, still covered with the placenta of the infant doctor of philosophy.

And then silence. You light a mental cigarette. There it lies, and there you lie next to it. Loving it and loathing it, just like the mother looks with endless love and hate at her wrinkly stinky ugly newborn. And contrary to children, it will neither leave you, nor do you run the risk of it dying before you. You feel relieved and life has just started making sense again. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, you still have friends and it is again guilt-free to enjoy your free time. It is the beginning of the rest of your life, and no matter what you do, you’ll never have to call it a PhD again.

Trust me, I am a doctor.

P.S. This is for Lu who is at the final stage of writing and all fellow PhDs. The text is an elaboration on an idea I communicated appropriately upon submission of my manuscript.

I reached the conclusion only recently that perfection should be defined as the ultimate frontier one reaches in tolerating annoying details in an often dreamed-of experience. And it so appears that it is the small –let’s call them- imperfections that contribute in reinstating the perfect experience as something earthly, as something that one really experiences and eventually owns; unlike a trip aided by substances of organic or not origin, that you vaguely remember the day after in a fog of lethargy and dismissal. And still even in those moments, the shear grasp of the mishap and the relativism will momentarily define perfection in that specific time localized event.
Simple examples. You reach Barbados, like Alain de Boton after a hectic flight. You went there in search of the immaculate white powder sand beach and you are faced with a dull dysfunctional airport, traffic, industrial monsters, you reach your destination only to discover the misconception your assumption induced, no hot water, flies, humidity, and what not. That wasn’t what you imagined when you read Barbados, is it? De Boton blames it all on oneself; ah you brought it with you, that murky pessimistic ol’ bastard and while yourself will be there, you never get a perfect moment; for it is not Barbados but you. So, do you recall those perfect moments back “at home”?

Actually the fact that a perfect moment can be purely framed by the imperfection around it, reminds me of Aristotle’s definition of concepts through their antonym. There it goes again, someone has already thought (and written) about it. I should have posted this one centuries ago.

At the beginning you asked me to choose, and you said “you are good at this and at that, but you must choose”. And I did. You said I wouldn’t regret.

After 5 years and a motorbike accident, you said I should choose again, and you said “you are good with the new stuff and you are good with the old stuff. But you must choose”. And I did. You said I wouldn’t regret.

And two years and couple of aurora borealis sightings later, you said I should choose once again. You just would not let me be. You said “you can go here and you can go there and you can go there, but you must choose”. And I did. And you said I wouldn’t regret.

And now, 8 years, 202 pages, 11 propositions and 1.2 performances further, you say I can’t choose. Not now. And maybe not ever. That you have predecided for me. And that you were just teasing me before, and you knew I would regret. Because you brought us closer in this way. So close that I couldn’t see I couldn’t choose anymore. And all I see is drifting from the loved ones that also chose and can’t choose anymore.

But we shall prevail. Or maybe just not quite.

In any case, the learning is that once the shit hits the fan, it’s good to have your face covered. Many claim you should direct this effort to your ass, but I really doubt it. Your rear is prone to all sorts of abuses during your career that makes it futile to protect it. Actually, it seems that it is more of a when and how much, which is the real global driving forces of Life, Universe and Everything. And while your bum might facilitate great advancement, it is your face (provided you cover it up) that will allow you to keep on breathing -thus surviving- through the toughest of all. Unless, nuclear shit hits the fan, but that’s a whole different story.

Just because. Did you actually solve the riddle? Did you find any answers? Any other smart questions? I didn’t really think so. SOB! In the meantime, fractally a lot has happened. The commemoration of Alexis’ death (on the 40th day, according to the script), some 1500ppl died, yet again isolated events, somewhere else now, it doesn’t matter, more people die here and there, there is always someone that “screws up” and might not even admit, ah well, people perish, parish perishes, some pedophiles got arrested in Greece (major As), the SWAT has become a regular truth, I scream for ice-cream and all these niceys.

In the meantime I am back in my favourite ME, Oman this time. Sarkozy is coming today, so everything is blocked, although the policemen are more watching out for Carla than anything else, helicopters swirl and the bloody rooster next door that starts even before the morning prayer; today it will be shot at, with a plastic straw and some plastic dough. I had a great colonial experience the other day, I think we should have been beheaded, but apparently the barbwire and the wall was tall enough. Sad but true. When can I enjoy guilt-free my ride in a super car going to a 5-star hotel with my most favourite of all men, so high in spirit, they truly are, but I can’t let go sometimes, sometimes I see the waste and me, I am the waste. Hmmm.

I was really planning to talk about food. I mean, this was supposed to be a food-recipe diary. Alas. Inshallah one of the next days. I would rather go back to the sea for a night swim with all the little fluorescent plankton around and the moon going rightthrough, silver coin on the sandy bottom.

After spending some months in non-democratic countries, finally I return to be proud of my own! MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!

The blog has been down for a few days and will be down for some more until I manage to find once-again-conscience-relieving-not-necessarily-fact-based-yet-comfortable answers on some of the following questions:

– Will justice decide if a 15 year-old should die or will Rambo return from Afghanistan?

– Can invertebrates study law?

– Who judges a judge? No. 1? Internationally?

– Do flower pots send people to hospitals for 5 euros a day?

– Does religion own lakes?

– Is working 16 hours as allegedly mind altering as ministers demonstrate?

– Which is better travel agency; the Monastery of Vatopedion or Siemens?

– How many policemen are necessary to celebrate white Christmas in gray Athens?

– Are fascists truly elected or only deserved?

– Does the constitution protect the Orwellian equivalence of a pork-head-offering with a pork-man?

– How many known-unknowns can a closed mathematical system of one equation solve?

– Do tear gases cure spiritual flatulence?

– Will national prices for couches drop after a series of demonstrations with adult participants?

– Can you find 3 Wise Men and a Virgin in the parliament?

– What does a pork head need to obtain ISO 9001 and HACCP?

– What is the energy potential of 300 representatives in joules/inch^2 during a football match or at the night club?

– Will the Army put some order or will the Order put some army?

– How many dictionaries of greek language does it take to change an LED lamp?

– Why did the shit hit the fan left-center-right?

– Can you choose which country you betray if you have no citizenship?

– Will Christmas still be celebrated even if the mayor of Athens would place Rudolph’s nose up his rectum?

It is very difficult to get the exact picture of what is currently happening in Greece while on move in Iran. One thing is a fact; a 16 year-old kid was shot dead by a policeman in the very center of Athens.

Just a few days ago, I saw this cartoon from Javad Alizadeh. One man shot dead, was holding a banner reading 2+2=4. The man who shot him, triumphant with one foot against the deadman’s chest, held another banner reading 2+2=5. And he had the gun.